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Businesses are directly affected by the ebbs and flows of the global financial economy. The same applies to online businesses. A downturn in the economy can severely limit your budget in managing your online business. We’ve all been there, especially with the recent global financial crisis. But there are several ways to make it work, even with a limited budget.

In this podcast, we have Convert, along with Creative Thirst‘s Bobby Hewitt, impart wisdom on the proper use of a marketing budget in a down economy. In a survey conducted by MarketingProfs, about 600 marketing professionals and managers were questioned about the status of the financial crisis and 75% of them said that they expected an extension of the marketing crises for a couple more years. This means that most businesses will probably be working with a limited budget for the foreseeable future.

Working With Limited Resources

When you experience a problem of this kind, it is expected for you to achieve even bigger results by using your reduced sources. As Bobby stated, the problem with choking budgets is that as a marketer, you’re still expected to produce results or even exceed expectations for the year. Virtually, you are expected to do even more with so much less resources. It may seem daunting, but it is possible.

We all know that today’s economic situation is not that stable as it looks like. If it was, we wouldn’t have encountered such problems. What is really important is that you try to use your budget properly, because every dollar you spent on something irrelevant may have negative results in the future. And these results will have huge impact on your business.

Know Where To Use Your Resources

You have to act and think wisely when working with a limited budget. Know what is right and what is not. Having a good budget plan can help in a big way. Here are several tips you can use that can help you make a huge progress even when working with a tight budget:

Try to improve the effectiveness of your company’s website by spending some money on the design and development to make it attractive to the customers and future buyers.

If your company needs to decrease its spending, make sure you take care of that. How? You can research and see which things are not essential for the well-being of your company and then cut them to save time and money.

Make small improvements in your company that won’t require wasting too much money. Sometimes small improvements can lead to large gains that can bring back the strengths in your business.

Among the many interesting findings was the fact that most companies spend less than 5% of their marketing budget on conversion optimization. Which really means that most companies spend 95% of their marketing budgets trying to find leads and prospects, but don’t seem to care very much if they ever become customers!

There should be a balance here and you should know that more than anyone. Conversion rate optimization is as important as it will provide your website the proper perspective and direction towards realizing its purpose and goal – and that is to generate profit for your business. We hope that our tips helped you realize what the best use of your marketing budget is in a down economy. If you want to find out more about conversion rate optimization and A/B testing, visit us at Convert.

Co-founder and CEO of Convert.com passionate in building communities that care. Trying to make that happen inside and outside Convert. I love working with my team to make our A/B testing software better for agencies and e-commerce clients.